Work The Future! Today

WTF! is a social venture enterprise that offers vision, leadership and solutions. We are creative catalysts for our clients. We offer up our ideas, thoughts and prescriptions in many forms: books, blogs, mentoring and bespoke personal engagements.

So Why Now?

The Old Story was built on top of a number of other myths such as Manifest Destiny, Westward Ho!, the Rugged Frontiersman, the Lone Cowboy, the Self-Made Man, and the American Dream. From 1950 to 1975 this dream became a reality for more than not as the postwar boom, based on American global supremacy, provided a rising tide that lifted many boats.

By 1980, the 1950s myths of Infinite Growth, Everybody Can Become Middle Class, and The Business of America is Business, collectively known as the American Dream, turned into the American Nightmare on Main Street. These myths have not been replaced, so we are operating in a vacuum without a compass. We need a compass and a map created on purpose, accelerated with passion. To be clear:

Our purpose: Sustainability and Prosperity for all. Sustainability for seven generations which gets renewed with each generation. Prosperity based on equality for all.

Our passion: To do good and do well. Good in the sense that the sanctity of life is always affirmed in action. Well that we can continue this work and expand it to include others of like mind.

We are working to update the current global OS (operating system) of focus on profit at any cost, to a shared life affirming purpose focus. We are taking the Old Story of Profit First over the chasm of chaos, confusion and change to the New Story of Purpose First. A global OS is one built upon a new set of beliefs. Beliefs about:

• Faith in your own potential
• That human nature is good, and
• Wisdom comes from internal examination of the difference between appearance and reality

Do you want to know where you are on this shift between Old and New Story? Go here.

Backstory

Since shift happens no matter what, we might as well shift the old Triple Bottom Line of ‘profit, people, planet’ to the new one of ‘planet, people, profit’… and eventually growing from profit to prosperity.

Why? As good planets are hard to find and without our planet, there will be no people. And with no people, no profit—nothing at all in fact. We are social creatures, not walking, talking bank accounts. Our true wealth is what we can give, not what we can take or buy.

In the next decade, we all win or we all lose together. The choice is ours. Increasingly, our global social operating system is moving towards tribalism. Increased hardened positions based on ‘tribal’ identity decrease opportunities for collaboration and compromise.

“The problem is structural: the root of tribalism is human nature, and the current state of American democracy is distinctly primeval. People have an urge to belong to exclusive groups and to affirm their membership by beating other groups.” Lilliana Mason “Uncivil Agreement

From a sociological perspective, tribalism presents an opportunity to define one group of people as “the other”. Once this is done you open the door to the rise of fascism. You don’t have to go too far back in history, say 80 years or so, to see similar patterns rising. History may not always repeat itself, but it sure does like to rhyme. Look at the recent changes in governance in places as varied as Hungary, Brazil and the United States.

The Affirmation

This social venture is about creating a shared destiny through transformation. We all die no matter what, so we might as well live well with enoughness for all, not way too much for all too few.

The time has come to get beyond greed, hate and delusion. Time to put aside the hindrances and share the wealth of opportunity that we can cocreate and become better together. To begin ask yourself: What is my unique gift that I can give myself and the world? How do you do that?

It is not enough to effect change in the social operating system to just sit and dispassionately observe. It is not enough to merely focus intention. To change the future, you must also be conscious of the consequences of your intentions—and act upon them.

With whom and where are you going to share it? And how and when? WE are about helping you answer these questions—and acting on them.

We offer the grounding by way of ethical behavior, the motivation of the heart through compassion and the strategic foresight of where to go, and also where not to go.

To Work The Future! Today is to cocreate a desirable future now—while we can—by all that we do and don’t do.

CS and N Take us out (video of live performance):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyU0P6iqyw4

OR for better audio (recorded): https://bit.ly/1DW3jJk

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